Hidden Places (33 page)

1 KINGS 19:7

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

F
or my sister, Lydia, life with Frank Wyatt was very difficult— and very lonely. Frank had no friends to speak of, and his greed and ruthlessness drove away the last of his family members. The only measure of joy Lydia found in life was in her three sons—especially Matthew, her eldest. I purchased a Gramophone around the time Samuel was born, and Lydia would bring her babies down to my house as often as she could sneak away. I recall so clearly how she would lift little Matthew in her arms as if he was her dancing partner and whirl him around my parlor as the music played, and the two of them would laugh and laugh. But by the time Matthew started school, Frank had crushed the last spark of laughter out of the poor child as thoroughly as a cider press squeezes juice from an apple.

I happened to be up at Lydia’s house one night, helping her nurse Samuel and little Willie through a bout of the measles, when I saw for myself how Frank raised his sons. Seven-year-old Matthew had just recovered from the measles, too, and had done his chores that night for the first time in over a week. I don’t know if the child was in a hurry or had simply forgotten, as children are apt to do, but Matthew failed to latch the door to the chicken coop for the night. When Frank discovered it, he stormed into the house, bellowing with rage.

‘‘You worthless kid! What’s the matter with you? Can’t you do anything right? Get up!’’ He grabbed Matthew by the arm and hauled him out of the kitchen chair where he sat eating his cookies and milk before bed. Frank was such a tall, broad-shouldered man that my stomach lurched at the sight of him clutching his helpless, terrified son. ‘‘I’ll teach you not to disobey me, you irresponsible whelp!’’

‘‘No, Frank! Listen, please!’’ Lydia cried, rushing to Matthew’s defense.

‘‘Get out of my way,’’ he said, shoving her aside. ‘‘If I listened to you, my sons would all end up in hell.’’

‘‘But he didn’t do it on purpose,’’ she pleaded. ‘‘He made a simple mistake!’’

‘‘You stay out of this!’’ he warned. ‘‘The Bible says, ‘Foolishness is bound in the heart of a child; but the rod of correction shall drive it far from him.’ ’’

He dragged Matthew toward the back door by his spindly arm. Frank paused only to remove his razor strop from its hook above the washstand. Tears sprang to my eyes when I glimpsed the thick, leather belt in Frank’s work-hardened hand.

‘‘Frank, don’t!’’ I cried. ‘‘He’s only a child!’’

He turned on me with a look that froze my blood. ‘‘Get out of my house! This is none of your affair!’’ He turned the same withering gaze on Lydia and she backed away from him in fear.

Matthew whimpered pitifully. In his terror, he had wet himself. But he didn’t struggle against his father’s grasp or scream for help. That’s how I knew with horrifying certainty that this wasn’t the first time he had been beaten. Only a child who had suffered an even harsher punishment for resisting would have learned not to.

The windows rattled as Frank slammed the kitchen door on his way out. It took me a moment to recover from my shock, then I started after Frank, determined to stop him.

‘‘Betsy, no! Don’t!’’ Lydia cried, holding me back.

‘‘I can’t just stand here and let him beat that child.’’

‘‘Please, you have to...or it’ll be much worse.’’ She was trembling from head to toe, and I suddenly realized that I was, too.

‘‘How long has this been going on?’’ I could barely get the words out. Lydia closed her eyes and turned her face away from me. I jerked her back. ‘‘Lydia,
how long
?’’

‘‘It won’t happen again, I swear it won’t. It was my fault because I was distracted with the other two being sick and I didn’t make sure Matthew did everything perfectly. Frank only gets angry when they make a mistake, and I’ll be more careful from now on. I’ll make sure they don’t make any mistakes.’’

‘‘They?’’
I asked in horror. ‘‘Surely Frank hasn’t...he wouldn’t beat little Sammy? He’s only a baby! What could a five year old possibly do that’s worthy of a beating with a razor strop?’’ When she didn’t answer me I grabbed her shoulders, shaking her slightly. ‘‘Lydia, answer me!’’

‘‘Frank says they have to learn to obey him immediately from the time they are very young. And they are learning, Betsy, honest they are. They both try hard now to do what he says right away. This time it was my fault—’’

‘‘Lydia, stop it! This is insane! Frank can’t expect perfection from mere children—or even from you, for that matter. You’re leaving him tonight, this very instant—and you’re taking those poor babies with you.’’

‘‘I can’t! How are we supposed to live?’’

‘‘I have enough money to support all of us. Let me take care of you. Come home with me, please. For your own sake as well as for theirs.’’

Lydia gave a harsh laugh. ‘‘Do you really think Frank Wyatt will give up his sons that easily, without a fight? Oh, he’ll let me leave him. He no longer needs me now that he has three heirs. But who’s going to protect my boys from their father if I’m not here? Who’s going to make sure they don’t make a mistake?’’

‘‘But
he’s
the one who’s mistaken! What Frank is doing isn’t right!’’

‘‘No? Well, who’s going to stop him? Who’s going to come between a father and his right to raise his children in his own home as he sees fit? Frank is a pillar in this community, a pillar in his church. There’s nothing I can do except stay here and try to protect my sons as best I can.’’

‘‘Don’t you see what Frank’s doing? It’s his own sin and guilt that he’s trying to purge out of them. Frank can never forgive himself for his ‘great sin’ with you, and so he’s taking it out on you and his sons. You have to leave him, Lydia. You have to get out of here.’’

‘‘No. I’m staying.’’ Her tears and her trembling had stopped. She was calm suddenly, with that terrible serenity I had once mistaken for inner strength. ‘‘This is the life I deserve,’’ she said with eerie detachment. ‘‘Frank is the punishment for my sin.’’

‘‘But it doesn’t work that way. God doesn’t punish us like that. He forgives us if—’’

She laid her ice-cold hand on my arm. ‘‘The baby is crying, Betsy. I have to go to him. Frank doesn’t like to hear him cry. You’d better leave before Frank comes back.’’

When I walked down the hill toward home, the night was fearfully still. As much as I’d dreaded hearing the sound of little Matthew being beaten, much worse was the silence of a seven-year-old child who’d already learned not to scream. I wept that night for a long, long time. I’d never felt more helpless in my life.

‘‘I hate him! He’s impossible to please!’’ Twelve-year-old Matthew threw himself into Walter’s wine-colored leather chair with such fury I feared he would break the springs. I didn’t say a word. The boy needed to vent his frustration, and my cottage was the only safe place in the world where he could do it. Matthew’s stored-up rage had already caused him to start picking fights at school, and then he’d been doubly disciplined—by the principal and later at home. As a result, Matthew had quickly learned to stuff his anger deep inside. I tried to provide an outlet for him so it wouldn’t build to volcanic proportions.

‘‘Tell me all about it,’’ I said, offering him a piece of spice cake and a glass of milk. He set them on the table beside the chair, too overwrought to eat.

‘‘Why is my father so hard on me? I can’t do anything right, and Willie—his precious Willie—never does anything wrong! I can’t stand living there another minute! I’m running away, Aunt Betty. This time I’m leaving for good and I’m never coming back!’’

‘‘I know, Toots. I know how hard it is for you at home, and I don’t blame you in the least for wanting to run. But you’re only twelve years old. Your father will send the sheriff after you quick as a wink, and then he’ll beat the tar out of you for disgracing him.’’

‘‘What did I ever do to deserve this?’’ he moaned. ‘‘My father can’t even stand to look at me. I see it in his eyes every day and I don’t know why. He hates the sight of me.’’

I longed to tell Matthew the truth; that every time Frank looked at him he was reminded of his own sin. But I couldn’t explain it to the poor child without exposing his mother’s sin as well. I bent over his chair and drew him into my arms. He was stiff with resistance at first, but he eventually melted—as he always did— starved as he was for love.

‘‘You know what, Toots?’’ I said as he clung to me. ‘‘I love you, and your mother loves you, and your heavenly Father loves you— now and always.’’

Matthew dried his tears on his sleeve, and after a while, he dug into his cake. ‘‘Did you make this just for me?’’ he asked.

‘‘You bet I did. And I have another surprise for you, too. Guess what came in the mail today?’’

‘‘A new Herman Walters book?’’ He almost smiled.

‘‘The latest one. It’s called
Danger in the Jungle
. Sounds exciting, doesn’t it?’’

He was soon absorbed in the book, thousands of miles away from his father. I loved watching him read, slumped in Walter’s chair with one of his lanky legs sprawled over the arm of it. I wrote nearly every book in that series for Matthew, so he would have an escape from his sorrowful life. If only for a few hours.

‘‘Can I take this book home with me?’’ he asked when it was time for him to go do his chores.

‘‘You’d better not. You know what’ll happen if your father catches you with it.’’

‘‘But why, Aunt Betty? What does he have against books?’’

‘‘I don’t know the answer to that, Toots,’’ I said, reaching up to smooth his dark hair off his forehead. He already stood several inches taller than me. ‘‘But you know you’re welcome to come down here and read anytime you want.’’

In the years that followed, Samuel would also read every single book in the series. But he never did confide in me or accept my consolation the way Matthew did. Sam was as skittish as a wild rabbit, the result of growing up in constant fear. H. G. Wells once wrote a book called
The Invisible Man
, and that’s the best way to describe poor Sam—he tried his best to be invisible, to disappear into the background where he could never get into trouble. He couldn’t live up to his father’s standards of perfection any better than the rest of us could, so his only defense was to slide through life as silently and invisibly as possible.

But what broke my heart more than anything else was the fact that no matter how many times Frank beat those boys, no matter how many times he withdrew his love and approval as punishment, his sons still strove with all their might to please him. Willie had somehow managed to earn his approbation—Matthew and Samuel saw the nods of acceptance he received, and it created false hopes in them that they might one day receive such looks as well. It also created in them an intense hatred for their father’s favorite son.

Frank Wyatt claimed to know the Bible and quoted it all the time, but he had somehow overlooked the tragic story of Jacob’s favoritism toward his son Joseph and the murderous jealousy that resulted in Joseph’s brothers. What happened to little Willie was Frank’s fault as surely as if he had drowned the child in the pond with his own two hands.

The image of Willie’s blanched, lifeless body being dragged from the icy water is one that I have never been able to erase from my memory. Worse was the fact that Frank made Matthew and Samuel stand shivering in the muddy snow at the edge of the pond and watch the sheriff and his deputies haul the corpse into their boat. They saw their brother’s frozen, staring eyes, his silenced scream. That’s the only reason I stayed there on that dreadful day. Lord knows, no one else would offer those boys an ounce of comfort.

Willie’s death changed everyone and became the great dividing line between the way things had always been and the way things would forever be. Matthew never forgave himself for allowing his brother to step out onto that ice. In the years that followed he endured unending verbal and physical abuse, but he accepted his father’s beatings and wrath as the punishment he justly deserved. Sam blamed himself for disappearing and not being there to help either of his brothers. His self-imposed penalty was to stick close to Matthew from now on, enduring Frank’s tirades along with him. If either of the boys had ever dreamed of leaving Wyatt Orchards to escape their father once they grew up, they no longer considered it an option. The orchard became their prison cell, Frank their jailer, a life sentence their punishment for murder.

Lydia never got over the loss of her youngest child, either. She withdrew almost completely from the reality of the world around her, battling bouts of deep depression. I understood her grief, having lost my beloved Walter, but while I accepted God’s consolation and yielded to His will for my life, Lydia accepted her suffering as God’s wrath. Frank Wyatt put that notion into her head.

No one could console Frank after the death of his favorite son, and he expressed his grief through the only emotion he knew how to show—anger. After the last of the mourners had gone home on the afternoon of Willie’s funeral, he turned on Lydia with unimaginable rage. I had walked up to their farmhouse to tell Lydia that Matthew and Samuel were down at my cottage and to ask if the boys could spend the night with me. That’s how I overheard Frank ranting.